


A Cure for the Cold

by cfcureton



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), olicity - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 06:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10551434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cfcureton/pseuds/cfcureton
Summary: If all goes well, a little Season 6 goodness. (Fingers crossed!)





	

Oliver pulled the hood further down over his face, grimacing as a gust of wind kicked up. From his crouched position he had a clear shot at the intersection below, but only if he stayed facing the rain. 

Nights like this brought back unwanted memories: Not of torture, or souls lost, but of cold. Cold that had settled into his bones and re-worked his DNA until it was no longer a condition he endured but a state of being, like "male" or "human". He wasn't cold, he WAS cold. 

The early days on the island brought him face to face with a lot of hardship, including hunger and thirst. Thank God he'd met Yao Fei sooner rather than later. Extreme teaching methods not withstanding, the man had kept him alive and taught him how to overcome his squeamishness to keep himself fed. Slade and Shado had built on his early education and expanded his island cooking repertoire. Slade's penchant for killing the biggest thing he could find meant a lot of roast wild pig, which was fantastic in theory until you actually had to prepare it, and then you ate it every meal for days. When he first came back Tommy proposed a hog roast to celebrate and it was all Oliver could do not to put him down. 

He'd come to realize that the survival skills he'd learned weren't all that complicated, stuff he might have picked up in a typical week of roughing it with his dad or his friends. But his father never had time for such trips, and his friends' idea of roughing it was staying in a hotel off the strip in Vegas. Once he'd learned those skills he could put the hunger problem further down his list of worries, but the cold, the cold always remained. His second home, the fuselage, was a step up from that cave, but it was far from waterproof. The only thing worse than being constantly cold was being constantly cold and wet, which he was most of the time. 

Oliver had once joked to Barry that thanks to Lian Yu he no longer got cold, but that wasn't true; he'd just become very very good at ignoring it. Nights like this, though, when the temps were dropping and the rain was turning icy, made it supremely hard to ignore. At street level he could use the roof overhangs for some cover, but then he'd need the bike to get around and these were no conditions for riding. So he was perched out in the open on the rooftop, an increasingly grumpy gargoyle, beginning to suspect that the jewel thieves who hit the Art Museum last night wouldn't try to fence the goods tonight after all. Maybe they decided to stay in because of the weather. Which made them wiser than him, he thought sourly.

"Bout done out there, Green Arrow?" a chipper voice piped up in his ear. 

"All quiet," he responded softly, shifting position slightly and wincing as the knee Mirakuru!Roy had damaged protested. "I don't think anything's going to happen tonight, Overwatch."

"Just as well. I have it on good authority the weather's only going to get worse." There was a short pause. "Curtis hacked into The National Weather Service. You know what a weather bug he is." Oliver grunted in agreement. "Remember when he decided to become a storm chaser and almost got struck by lightning on the roof of Palmer Tech?" she continued gleefully. He could hear her grin--what a concept--and the picture in his mind's eye of her chatting away began to warm him from the inside.

Oliver huffed out a laugh. "Yeah, that was fun."

"For the record, I'm standing right here," Curtis broke in. In the background Oliver suddenly picked up another sound in the Lair.

"Is that the oven timer?" he asked, stifling a groan as he rose to his feet and shook out his legs. Felicity thought the full kitchen they'd installed in the Lair was the team's best idea in forever. He knew this because she never missed an opportunity to mention it, and to remind them that it was her idea. 

"Yep!" Felicity popped the "p". "Pigs in a blanket! Curtis and I got the munchies." At that same moment he heard the smoke alarm go off. "And that," he started.

"Crepes," she supplied. "Although I think I'll need to give you a status update on those when Curtis is done with the fire extinguisher."

"Pigs in a blanket and crepes, huh?" he grunted as he climbed down the building to the alley. "Not a combination you naturally think of."

"Curtis had a craving," she replied. "He's weird."

"Again, standing right here."

Oliver reached the ground and began the walk back, keeping to the shadows. 

"Curtis is having cravings? He isn't even the one who's pregnant," Oliver teased, continuing to warm thinking of his destination and everything that meant. Suddenly the cold didn't bother him at all.


End file.
